James Tate and Dara Wier
Caption:
James Tate reads from his chapbook The Zoo Club (Rain Taxi, 2011) at an event for the Free Verse series with poet Dara Wier at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Genre:
Genre: Poetry
James Tate
Caption:
In this interview with James Tate, presented by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature organization, the poet speaks about his writing process, his work, and what it means to be a writer.
Genre:
The Singing Knives
Caption:
"Jimmy ran down the road / With the knife in his mouth / He was naked / And the moon / Was a dead man floating down the river..." Listen to "The Singing Knives," a poem by Frank Stanford, read by his good friend Bill Willett. Stanford's posthumous collection What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) is shortlisted for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Genre:
National Book Critics Circle Finalists Announced
The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) announced the finalists for its 2015 awards yesterday. Poets Terrance Hayes and Ada Limón, fiction writers Lauren Groff and Anthony Marra, and nonfiction writers Ta-Nehisi Coates and Maggie Nelson are among the thirty finalists. The annual awards are given in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, criticism, autobiography, and biography.
The poetry finalists are Ross Gay for Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press), Terrance Hayes for How to Be Drawn (Penguin), Ada Limón for Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions), Sinéad Morrissey for Parallax: And Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and the late Frank Stanford for What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford (Copper Canyon Press).
The fiction finalists are Paul Beatty for The Sellout (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Lauren Groff for Fates and Furies (Riverhead), Valeria Luiselli for The Story of My Teeth (Coffee House Press), Anthony Marra for The Tsar of Love and Techno (Hogarth), and Ottessa Moshfegh for Eileen (Penguin Press).
The autobiography finalists are Elizabeth Alexander for The Light of the World (Grand Central Publishing), Vivian Gornick for The Odd Woman and the City (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), George Hodgman for Bettyville (Viking), Margo Jefferson for Negroland (Pantheon), and Helen Macdonald for H Is for Hawk (Grove Press).
Other finalists include Ta-Nehisi Coates for Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau) and Maggie Nelson for The Argonauts (Graywolf Press) for the criticism prize. Farrar, Straus and Giroux led the field with five of its titles nominated for awards. Small presses with titles up for awards include Graywolf Press, Copper Canyon Press, Coffee House Press, and Milkweed Editions.
The NBCC also announced that Kirstin Valdez Quade is the recipient of the John Leonard Prize for her debut story collection, Night at the Fiestas (Norton). Carlos Lozada, an associate editor and nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post, won the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and writer Wendell Berry will receive the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.
First given in 1975, the National Book Critics Circle awards are nominated and selected by the NBCC board of directors, which is made up of twenty-four critics and editors. The 2014 winners included Claudia Rankine in poetry for Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press), Marilynne Robinson in fiction for Lila (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and Roz Chast in autobiography for Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury). This year’s winners will be announced on March 17 at the New School in New York City.
Clockwise from top left: Hayes (MacArthur Foundation), Limón (Sarah Shatz), Groff (Megan Brown), Nelson (Harry Dodge), Coates (Liz Lynch), Marra
Library Tank
Caption:
In this video produced by 7UP, Argentinian artist Raul Lemesoff shows off his "Weapon of Mass Instruction:" a mobile library in the form of a military tank.
Tags:
Groundhog Day
On February 2, according to popular folklore, a groundhog that emerges from its burrow and sees its shadow signifies six more weeks of winter; if it's cloudy and no shadow is present, spring will arrive early. Other animals, too, are said to exhibit weather-forecasting attributes: sneezing cats, fat rabbits, and howling wolves, for example. Write a poem based on one of these legends, perhaps experimenting with an unexpected point of view, such as having the speaker of the poem be the animal, or an onlooker who is completely unfamiliar with the myth behind it. What textures, sights, and sounds would be unique to the occurrence? Explore the emotional resonances and psychological underpinnings of superstitions and folklore.
Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference
The 2023 Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference was held from June 20 to June 25 in Minnesota’s Northwoods at Bemidji State University. The conference featured workshops, craft talks, panels, an evening reading series, and manuscript consultations for poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. The faculty included poets and essayists Ross Gay, Keetje Kuipers, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Lia Purpura, and fiction and nonfiction writers Will Weaver and Diane Wilson. The 2023 Visiting Writers were poets Heid E. Erdrich and Sun Yung Shin.
Type:
CONFERENCE
Ignore Event Date Field?:
yes
Event Date:
December 13, 2025
Rolling Admissions:
ignore
Application Deadline:
December 13, 2025
Financial Aid?:
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline:
December 13, 2025
Free Admission:
no
Contact Information:
Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference, Bemidji State University, 1500 Birchmont Drive NE #4, Bemidji, MN 56601. (218) 755-2068. Mathew Hawthorne, Conference Coordinator.
Mathew Hawthorne
Conference Coordinator
Contact City:
Bemidji
Contact State:
MN
Contact Zip / Postal Code:
56601
Country:
US
Tags:
Lake Echo, Dear
Caption:
"Poetry is a necessity of life. It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free and declare them so." The Poetry Everywhere project, in association with the Poetry Foundation, features C. D. Wright reading her poem "Lake Echo, Dear."
Genre:
C. D. Wright
Caption:
“Comrades, be not in mourning for your being...” C. D. Wright reads “Like Hearing Your Name in a Language You Don’t Understand” as part of the Academy of American Poets’ Dear Poet project. The poem is from Wright’s collection Rising, Falling, Hovering (Copper Canyon Press, 2008).
Genre:
Music and Poetry
As forms of creative expression, music and poetry share similarities in the usage of sound and rhythm to generate emotional resonance. Musicians and poets have often expressed their mutual admiration, and even collaborated with each other. Read the poem “Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?,” from Tracy K. Smith’s collection Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011), with its many references to David Bowie, or watch an animation of Charles Bukowski’s “The Laughing Heart” read by Tom Waits. Then write a poem of your own inspired by the mood or themes of a favorite musician or song.
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